Editing Marble Arch (section)

==Relocation==

[[File:Buckingham Palace engraved by J.Woods after Hablot Browne & R.Garland publ 1837 edited.jpg|thumb|Marble Arch (left) before its relocation to Hyde Park in 1847.  It was constructed in 1832–1833, as the ceremonial entrance to the newly rebuilt [[Buckingham Palace]] courtyard]]
Buckingham Palace remained unoccupied, and for the most part unfinished, until it was hurriedly completed upon the accession of [[Queen Victoria]] in 1837. Within a few years, it was deemed that the palace was too small to accommodate the large court and the Queen's expanding family. The solution was to enlarge the palace by enclosing the cour d'honneur with a new east range. This façade is today the principal front and public face of the palace and shields the inner façades containing friezes and marbles matching and complementing those of the arch.

When building work began in 1847, the arch was dismantled and rebuilt by [[Thomas Cubitt]] as a ceremonial entrance to the northeast corner of [[Hyde Park, London|Hyde Park]] at Cumberland Gate.<ref>''Holland & Hannen and Cubitts – The Inception and Development of a Great Building Firm'', published 1920, p. 35</ref>  The reconstruction was completed in March 1851.<ref name=past/> A popular story says that the arch was moved because it was too narrow for the Queen's state coach to pass through, but, in fact, the [[Gold State Coach]] passed under it during [[Elizabeth II]]'s coronation in 1953.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.apts.org.uk/route.jpg |title=Coronation route |access-date=21 September 2011}}</ref>

Three small rooms inside the rebuilt arch were used as a police station from 1851 until at least 1968 ([[John Betjeman]] made a television programme inside it in 1968 and referred to it as a fully functional police station).<ref>{{cite web |publisher=BBC TV |title=Marble Arch to Edgware |date=1968 |url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rzwzq|access-date=21 February 2020}}</ref> It firstly housed officers of the [[Royal Parks Constabulary]] and later the [[Metropolitan Police]]. One policeman stationed there during the early 1860s was [[Samuel Parkes (VC)|Samuel Parkes]], who won the [[Victoria Cross]] in the [[Charge of the Light Brigade]] in 1854, during the [[Crimean War]].